This week, PlayStation introduced a new feature called My PS4 Life that allows users to create personalized videos detailing their PS4 exploits. However, while Sony had hoped that the tool would allow users to connect through their favorite games, it also allowed them to extrapolate player counts.

For each My PS4 Life video, users can share a trophy that they earned and the application will include the exact number of PS4 players who also earned that trophy. It might seem like an innocuous stat, but when combined with the info included in the Trophy section of the PS4 dashboard, specifically the percentage of total players who earned a trophy, users can deduce how many people actually played a specific game.

A user on Reddit showed an example using the Photo Bomber Trophy in Fallout 76, which was reportedly unlocked by 33,764 PS4 users when the My PS4 Life video was created. Then, looking at the Trophy list, the user can see that 8.3% of total players have earned the Photo Bomber Trophy, meaning roughly 406,000 players own Fallout 76 on PS4.

Obviously, the math takes a few liberties and operates under some assumptions but we’re sure that Sony did not intend for the application to be used this way. While publishers do announce sales numbers for their games, they typically contextualize them in a manner that emphasizes the positives and avoids covering the negatives. Some publishers don’t even announce their sales numbers, like Bethesda has yet to do for Fallout 76.

It will be interesting to see if Sony makes any changes to the My PS4 Life application or if it scraps the feature altogether. No doubt some publishers don’t care about player numbers getting out there – Red Dead Redemption 2 seems to be doing just fine on PS4 – while other publishers may not want users to see how poorly their game was received on a platform.

Of course, PS4 numbers are also only one part of the equation so there’s it’s impossible to draw definitive conclusions on multi-platform titles. For Sony exclusives, however, this could be a new tool to help gauge sales of every major game.

Source: gamstat